The Cross of Christ

by John R.W. Stott

First, there are those who have a strong antipathy to legal categories in all talk about salvation, on the ground that they represent God as Judge and King, not as Father, and therefore cannot adequately portray either his personal dealings with us or our personal relationship with him. This objection would be sustained if justification were the only image of salvation.

Other critics, secondly, attempt to dismiss the doctrine as a Pauline idiosyncrasy,

Thirdly, we need to look at the reasons for the Roman Catholic rejection of the Reformers’ teaching on justification by faith.

If ‘just’ means ‘having a righteous character’ or ‘being conformed to the image of Christ’, then God’s declaration does not immediately secure it, but only initiates it. For this is not justification but sanctification, and is a continuous, lifelong process.

At other times ‘sanctification’ describes the process of growing in holiness and becoming Christlike.59

See Coberly’s Thesis and Peterson’s “Possessed By God”

while sanctification (God making us righteous through his Spirit’s indwelling), though begun the moment we are justified, is gradual and throughout this life incomplete, as we are being transformed into the likeness of Christ ‘from one degree of glory to another’ (2 Cor. 3:18, RSV).

Again, see Coberly and Peterson on the subject of positional sanctification…

There is no co-operation here between God and us, only a choice between two mutually exclusive ways, his and ours.

In order to summarize Paul’s defence of the divine justification of sinners, I will select four of his key phrases,

First, the source of our justification is indicated in the expression justified by his grace

another key expression of Paul’s, which introduces us to the ground of our justification, is justified by his blood (Rom. 5:9).

When God justifies sinners, he is not declaring bad people to be good, or saying that they are not sinners after all; he is pronouncing them legally righteous, free from any liability to the broken law, because he himself in his Son has borne the penalty of their law-breaking.

Thirdly, the means of our justification is indicated in Paul’s favourite expression justified by faith.66

boasting. For unless all human works, merits, co-operation and contributions are ruthlessly excluded, and Christ’s sin-bearing death is seen in its solitary glory as the only ground of our justification, boasting cannot be excluded.

Fourthly, what are the effects of our justification? I think we can deduce them from another, and sometimes neglected, Pauline expression, namely that we are justified in Christ.69

to say that we are justified ‘in Christ’ points to the personal relationship with him which by faith we now enjoy. This simple fact makes it impossible for us to think of justification as a purely external transaction; it cannot be isolated from our union with Christ and all the benefits which this brings.

Again see Ferguson in “The Whole Christ”

justification is an eschatological event. It brings forward into the present the verdict which belongs to the last judgment.

Reconciliation with God, then, is the beginning. This is the meaning of ‘atonement’.

‘Access’ (prosagōgē) to God is another blessing of reconciliation.

reconciliation, peace with God, adoption into his family and access into his presence all bear witness to the same new relationship into which God has brought us.

reconcilation has a horizontal as well as a vertical plane.

God. It seems more probable, therefore, that the principalities and powers have been ‘reconciled’ in the sense of the next chapter, namely that they have been ‘disarmed’ by Christ, who ‘made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross’ (Col. 2:15).

The first truth this passage makes clear is that God is the author of the reconciliation.

no explanation of the atonement is biblical which takes the initiative from God, and gives it instead either to us or to Christ.

William Temple’s memorable phrase, ‘all is of God; the only thing of my very own which I contribute to my redemption is the sin from which I need to be redeemed’.

In other words, it is a mistake to think that the barrier between God and us, which necessitated the work of reconciliation, was entirely on our side, so that we needed to be reconciled and God did not. True, we were ‘God’s enemies’, hostile to him in our hearts.78 But the ‘enmity’ was on both sides. The wall or barrier between God and us was constituted both by our rebellion against him and by his wrath upon us on account of our rebellion.

First, the language.

second argument concerns the context,

Thirdly, there is the theology.

So the ‘peace’ which evangelists preach (Eph. 2:17) cannot be that our enmity has been overcome (they are rather preaching in order that it may be), but that God has turned aside from his enmity because of Christ’s cross.

The work of reconciliation, in the sense of the New Testament, is a work which is finished, and which we must conceive to be finished, before the gospel is preached....Reconciliation...is not something which is being done; it is something which is done.

What, then, was it which God did or accomplished in and through Christ?

positive. Negatively, God declined to reckon our transgressions against us (v. 19b).

positive counterpart is given in verse 21: ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’

Emil Brunner’s epigram: ‘Justification means this miracle: that Christ takes our place and we take his.’87

Looking back over the paragraph we are studying, it is important to note the paradox constituted by the first and last statements. On the one hand, God was in Christ reconciling. On the other, God made Christ to be sin for us. How God can have been in Christ when he made him to be sin is the ultimate mystery of the atonement. But we must hold both affirmations tenaciously, and never expound either in such a way as to contradict the other.

sinners need to ‘be reconciled to God’, yet we must not forget that on God’s side the work of reconciliation has already been done.

It is not enough to expound a thoroughly orthodox doctrine of reconciliation if we never beg people to come to Christ. Nor is it right for a sermon to consist of an interminable appeal, which has not been preceded by an exposition of the gospel. The rule should be ‘no appeal without a proclamation, and no proclamation without an appeal’.

four of the principal New Testament images of salvation, taken from the shrine, the market, the lawcourt and the home.

certain themes emerge from all four images.

First, each highlights a different aspect of our human need.

Propit...

w...

redem...

capt...

justifi...

g...

reconcil...

e...

Secondly, all four images emphasize that the saving initiative was taken by God in his love.

Thirdly, all four images plainly teach that God’s saving work was achieved through the bloodshedding, that is, the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ.